The nation’s major drugstore chains are moving beyond simply doling out drugs and Kleenex. They’re opening more in-store clinics and offering more health-care products in part to serve an aging population that will need more care.

It’s also a response to the massive U.S. health-care overhaul, which is expected to add about 25 million newly insured people who will need medical care and prescriptions. And drugstores are offering more services as a way to boost revenue in the face of competition from retailers such as Safeway and Walmart that have added in-store pharmacies.

Beth Stiller, a divisional vice president at Walgreen, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, said the changes are necessary because time-pressed customers have come to expect that they will be able to do more than just fill a prescription at drugstores.

“We live in a world where personalization and ... high-touch service is much more expected,” agreed Helena Foulkes, chief health-care strategy and marketing officer for CVS Caremark, the nation’s No. 2 drugstore chain.

CVS runs more than 650 MinuteClinics that are staffed by nurse practitioners or physician assistants and handle largely minor illnesses like pink eye. CVS also offers acne consultations and monitoring of chronic conditions such as diabetes. The company aims to operate about 1,500 MinuteClinics by 2017.

In San Diego County, Sharp HealthCare provides medical oversight for MinuteClinics inside 10 local stores.

Michael Murphy, Sharp chief executive, said when the deal was announced with CVS in April that it extends the health system’s reach into the retail world without requiring a large capital expenditure.

“The consumers have clearly demonstrated that they are looking for access points when physicians’ offices aren’t open, on weekends and extended hours,” Murphy said.

The three-year agreement between CVS and Sharp calls for a growing level of integration, with the drugstore clinics eventually adopting the electronic medical records system used by Sharp’s main doctor groups. That way, if patients first stop in at a CVS clinic, they can be referred to a Sharp doctor if more advanced levels of care are needed.

Gradual shift

Nationally, the move toward expanding products and services has been gradual. Until about five years ago, the major drugstore chains focused on adding stores, not services. Then when states started allowing pharmacists to provide flu shots, it paved the way for drugstores to begin offering other immunizations for diseases like pneumonia and shingles.

And after Congress passed the health-care overhaul in 2010, drugstores started adding more in-store clinics to help serve the newly insured population that will be created by that law. At the same time, grocers and other big retailers have started beefing up their health-care offerings to compete with pharmacies for customers.

Locally, Palomar Health has led the way in connecting clinics and supermarkets, opening what it calls “Expresscare” clinics inside Albertsons grocery stories. It now operates four clinics, in Escondido, Rancho Peñasquitos, Temecula and San Marcos.

Russ Riehl, director of Palomar’s retail efforts, said the Expresscare clinics have grown in popularity, serving about 2,000 customers in 2008 compared with about 10,000 last year. Riehl said Palomar thought that the clinics’ main customers would be uninsured North County residents who preferred to pay in cash. However, six years into the retail experiment, the executive said that 70 percent of visits come from insured customers. Though most have regular doctors, the local grocery store is often more convenient for minor problems.

“People are wanting more timely access. They want convenient times and locations,” Riehl said.

He said the top three services provided by Palomar’s Expresscare clinics are sick care “sore throat” diagnosis, sports and school physicals and vaccinations.

Other grocery chains besides Albertsons are getting into the retail health clinic game. For instance, Safeway, which runs more than 1,600 stores under the Safeway and Vons names, is adding private rooms in some stores to make its pharmacists more accessible. It also is adding products that focus on a customer’s health and well-being, such as health food or goods for a specific diet, like gluten-free products.

Steven Burd, the grocer’s recently retired chairman and CEO, told investors this year that he believes “Safeway can own the wellness space.”

“It became a marketplace where everybody was doing a little bit of everybody else’s stuff,” said Jack Horst, a partner with the management consulting firm Kurt Salmon. “There are so many other options for people these days in terms of finding an outlet for filling a prescription.”

Remote consultations

So drugstores are expanding their offerings to stay competitive. Rite Aid, the nation’s No. 3 chain, has converted more than 900 of its 4,615 locations to a wellness format it introduced in 2011. The stores, including some in San Diego County, offer organic soups, pastas and juices and a line of home fitness equipment like yoga mats and dumbbells that Rite Aid helped design.

They also feature employees equipped with iPads to find and print coupons for customers, look up information on vitamins or enroll them in services like automated pharmacy refills.

Additionally, Rite Aid started a program in March that allows customers at about 70 of its stores to connect remotely with doctors for a video or phone consultation covering a range of ailments from allergies to the flu. The 10-minute virtual consultations with physicians, who are contracted by Rite Aid, cost $45. That compares with the more than $100 someone without insurance could pay for a doctor visit.

For its part, Walgreen has opened 11 flagship stores across the country that offer extras like the barista-prepared coffee, juice and smoothie bars, and boutiques that provide services like eyebrow grooming and advisers who dole out information on beauty products. Some even come with humidors to hold cigar collections.

These stores tend to be located in high-profile spots like New York’s Empire State Building. And they’re nearly twice the size of a typical, 14,000-square-foot drugstore.

Walgreen also is expanding the scope of the small clinics it has in the back of hundreds of its stores to include the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of chronic diseases like diabetes that are typically handled by doctors. These clinics, which are usually staffed by nurse practitioners or physician assistants, already handle more basic care like the CVS clinics.

New format

More broadly, Walgreen has launched a “Well Experience” format in about 400 of its more than 8,000 stores nationwide. These stores feature expanded beauty options, fresh food and groceries, private rooms for pharmacist consultations and, in some cases, an iPad-toting employee to help customers.

Walgreen started its “Well Experience” format in late 2010 and redesigned its stores to make space for the consultation room for pharmacists, who also are more accessible when they’re not in the room. They sit behind a desk instead of behind a counter. The company has since redesigned most of its Indianapolis locations to test the concept.

Tina Panyard, who shops at a Walgreen store in Indianapolis at least twice a week, likes the new products and services at the store. She said the containers of fruit and the salads give her a healthier option than McDonald’s — at about the same price. “We love that Walgreen has this new fresh food, quickie stuff,” she said.

For the record: A previous version of this story identified Sharp CEO Michael Murphy as the CEO of Scripps Health. We apologize.